I cannot leave unanswered the misleading statements about the Brighton station site made by Richard Paul-Jones and Selma Montford (Letters, February 21).

Mr Paul-Jones bemoans the supermarket's size. Yes, the gross area is larger than Brighton and Hove City Council's planning brief states.

But as he knows, the critical area is the retail area. This is fixed at 25,000 sq ft, as the brief requires. The back-up area is larger because of the nature of this mixed-use scheme and includes common areas not usually seen in a traditional supermarket.

The whole point of this scheme is to cut the dominance of the car. Because the site is so close to the major public transport modes (train and bus), we have included minimal provision for parking throughout in order to encourage the use of these facilities.

At the same time, we recognise the car is still an important component in most people's lives and have to make provision for that, too. This includes free use of the supermarket car park.

Ms Montford is factually incorrect in her comments about jobs at the new Study Group college. Of the 300 jobs envisaged, 150 or so are new because of the expansion possibilities this project allows. This would be Study Group's European HQ and would represent a major loss to Brighton and Hove if the organisation moved elsewhere.

This area needs new development of businesses and homes where they are called for and not on Green Belt land. We have tried very hard to create this package on what is a very complicated site.

-Chris Gilbert, QED, Development Manager, New England Consortium